Media diary

By The Minx

12:00AM BST 16 May 2003

The Sun gave itself a big pat on the back for its principled handling of the case of the stolen Harry Potters - two volumes apparently handed in by a reader, and one offered for £20,000. The paper promised to hand the first two back to the publishers, Bloomsbury, and the third is in the hands of police. How odd, then, that Bloomsbury has named the paper's publisher as a co-defendant in a High Court action.

Bloomsbury claims the Sun broke its promises to return its copies immediately and not to make use of them. Minx hears an action for breach of copyright looms. There is also the matter of the two strangers who turned up at a hotel near the Potter printworks on the day the copies were found. They asked to receive something on the fax machine, and the landlady recalls that the incoming sheet bore the Sun's letterhead. Bloomsbury's people want to see it, among other things.

"There are concerns as to the Sun's role in this, and unanswered questions," says a source. "We want some explanations." Tom Crone, the Sun's lawyer, insists the books are back with the publisher and that it didn't give away the plot. Bloomsbury's behaviour "appears irrational and smacks of paranoia," he says. "It seems that for some people, thank you is such a hard word."

Still in the High Court . . . Hachette Filipacchi, publisher of Elle and Red, was there yesterday to serve a writ for damages on Condé Nast chief Nicholas Coleridge over his claim in the Evening Standard that a share of the publishing company's profits "goes straight to Saddam Hussein's bunker".

The Iraqi government does indeed own two percent of Hachette's parent company - but the holding has been frozen since 1991.

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Another drawback to Piers Morgan's bid to become a TV personality is that it threatens to breathe fresh life into Carol Vorderman's career.

Staff at the Daily Mirror say that Des Kelly, Morgan's deputy, has grown emboldened by his boss's increasingly frequent absences - hence pictures of Vorderman have appeared on page one no less than three times in the last fortnight, more than all the other nationals put together, not to mention the paper's exhaustive serialisation of her detox guide.

As well as being a top television talent, Vorderman also happens to be Kelly's girlfriend.

Last Friday, the Independent's review section carried a cover story by schoolboy columnist Johann Hari on why William will never be king. "One man has the power to finally destroy [sic] the British monarchy. No, not our best republican thinker Roy Hattersley, nor our best republican rabble-rouser Tony Benn, not even our constitutional moderniser Tony Blair. The man who will finally herald the Republic of Britain is a soon-to-be-21-year-old named William Windsor - or, as the history books might record him, William the Last."

Keen students of Hari's work may recall a piece he wrote for the New Statesman in January last year. That one began: "One man has the power to bring the British monarchy to the brink of destruction. No, not our best republican journalist Jonathan Freedland, nor our best republican rabble-rouser Tony Benn, nor even our constitutional moderniser Tony Blair. The man who might finally herald the Republic of Britain is a 19-year-old named William Mountbatten-Windsor - or, as the history books might record him, William the Last."

Ah, such consistency! Is it any wonder that Hari was named Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards? And is it any wonder the Independent's editor Simon Kelner felt moved to offer £55,000 a year to lure Hari from the Statesman?

If Observer columnist Richard Ingrams is looking for trouble, he's certainly going about it the right way. In his column last week, he laid into Iain Duncan Smith for taking a group of Tory MPs on a weekend "bonding party" at a country hotel.

"I don't know who it was who first had the idea of throwing together a group of executives or MPs in a remote country spot and getting them to bond . . . [But it has been] taken up with great enthusiasm by all the silliest people who ever got to run an organisation, a prime specimen being [former BBC director-general] Lord Birt."

Another, of course, is his own editor Roger Alton, whose attempt last year at getting Observer executives to bond at a country hotel ended with one broken nose, a punch-up and bruised egos.